Nickerson's Thoughts One Last Thought

I have to say that I learned quite a bit while completing the 23 Things. There are so many different websites and producs that I did not know existed. If had to list some of my favotites hay would have to be:

1. Google Lessons - I thought this was a genius way to have kids learn about history and also build on their problem solving skills at the same time.

2. Animoto - I thought that it was very interesting to upload some pictures and add music and the site puts the pictures into a slideshow and plays it to the music.

3. Podcasts - although I had heard of podcasts, I did not know what they were for. As I listened to the podcast on The Boston Tea Party, I thought to myself that this might be an interesting way to help students learn about History.

Nickerson's thoughts Thing #23

I googled web 2.0 23 things and came up with The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg, it appears that ehy not only had 23 things but they had 43 things in total. I think that it is alot of information but as a teacher you need to know when you can use something from the internet, book or a magazine and when you need to get permission or how long you can use it.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #22

I have always been a fan of learning about the History of The United States. The Podcast that I listened to was a Podcast about the Boston Tea Party. This Podcast comes from the www.odeo.com, and the title of the Podcast is Matt's Today in History. I think that as a teacher it would be worthwhile to make podcasts for students, there are a few good uses for the podcast. A teacher could make a podcast to refresh students on what they have learned during the course of a week or a teaher might use a podcast if he or she is going to be absent so the students will have some sort of lesson. I actually saved the link to Matt's Today in History so that I might listen to the podcasts in the future.


http://odeo.com/episodes/23776997-MTIH-396-The-Boston-Tea-Party-1773">

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #21

I never knew that this site Animoto even existed, I really enjoyed putting together a slideshow although I did not have ten pictures. I used all of the ones that I had available. My slideshow is pictures from when I went to London wtih APSU, in the Winter of 2007-2008. So it was only right that I used The Clash, and a great song, London Calling. Using this site was very easy and as a teacher you could have your students make a slideshow with history pictures.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #20

I have been using Youtube for a long time, I sometimes go to this site just to mess around and watch videos. There is so much that as a teacher you can do with this site as I have found many intersting videos about History on here. These videos would help a student understand a particular part of history. The only problem with the site that I have is sometimes you think you are going to a specific video and it goes to another video.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #19

So I checked out TeacherPOP, and made myself an account. I found it really interesting that there were so many teachers on there trying to find information from other teachers as well as sharing iniformation about different websites and methods to teach students. I will be using this site for sure especially because these teachers are mostly from around Clarksville. I will be lookingfor information on teaching History and geograpy as these will be my major areas of concern. below is the link to my TeacherPOP page.


http://teacherpop.ning.com/profile/MatthewDNickerson



http://rachelmorris-apsuthing2.blogspot.com/2009/11/thing-19.html?showComment=1258826129984_AIe9_BEHgnnaVQBInxrEKb49A1AvtbTBLr4mUS7okC5cCpjNq1sgz0icl8VJdFBa9z9skaby7mgHvsauJwVGRbjJNf61OxvYsXlxqMb9kCf5tqvIfp1X_phCQ5F5VZa_lUx6tfm3GDkVspj5h6iN7HCYvJPiRR7a-flnaBbNd04Wz0Kk6M9-A9dUNlDBL7yM6JdeW8Kl9YXftIjv7yIc6r9GOG7-1T4CUoiX35dKOpMtw4S-XwqGOOk#c395910300217111520

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #18

Well I have been a member of Myspace for five years now, but I have only been using Facebook for two. Both of these sites are great for networking and finding old friends and family or just being able to send a quick birthday or get well message to people. I think as a teacher this site might work well if all of your students had an account, but unless you are a Middle or High School teacher the probability of your students using these sites is very low. You could post messages giving instructions or if students had a question they could message the teacher and you would be able to answer them in real time if you kept it open an available. I think they both have two redeeming qualities, on Myspace you can personalize your page with HTML, a music player, pictures, and any text style you want, this is not offered on Facebook. Facebook on the other hand lets you know what other people are doing in real time as they post thier status.



http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=name&id=1182169245

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #17

All I have to say is Wow! I did not have any idea that there was such a thing as Social Bookmarking. The thought that you could save your favorite websites and be able to access them from any computer is genius. I can see where as a teacher this would come in extremely helpful, the ability for you to bookmark sites and tag them and also be able to search through others filecabinet to see what they have bookmarked is amazing. As a future teacher I will definately use this website. I am always surfing the internet and with this site, I can find other sites that I never knew existed and get ideas that never would have come to me.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #16

I decided to go to rememberthemilk.com and check around on that website, I thought that it was very easy to navigate and the controls were very understandable. I am not super technical with many devices but I could see myself using this site in order to organize my homework schedule. I think that as a teacher you could have your students sign into that website and put thier due dates for homework in there every week that way the would have a way to check. You could also give the site to parents so they could check to make sure that homework is being completed by their children.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #15

So messing around with the Wiki was a very interesting thing, it took me five times to get myself logged in so I could update the page to place my picture. I think this would be a great tool to have students on assigned days place something interesting in thier lives on there and the class could have a quick discussion about it on a daily basis. I think this might be a great way to start a class instead of having a word of the day or a quick writing assignment.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #14

I set up accounts on Gliffy and Bubbl.us. Gliffy is a Flow chart as where Bubbl.us is a mind map. I used to take Architecture when I was in High School, and being able to make floor plans and use the different symbold for doors and windows was very easy. I also played around a bit with Bubbl.us and I could see where as a teacher you could assign a project to students and have them first come up with a mind map in order to have their thoughts organized. I have saved both of these sites as favorites on my computer for later use.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #13

I really like the Zoho Writer program, one reason that I think that it would be good is instead of having to pay for Microsoft Word, you can make documents on Zoho. As a teacher this would be useful to save money in the classroom as this program is free, so classwork such as papers and reports could be completed internally in the classroom. The extra money that would normally be used to update Microsoft Word could be used for other purchases such as supplies or other needed programs.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #12

So I just messed aroud with iGoogle, I can see how it is a great way to organize yourself and have different news feeds, Quotes of the day, videos , and sports scores, but I don't really think that the idea works for me. I am not one to have a page of everything there for me to have to fool with, I don't have the patience to move things around, reorganize, change colors of the page. I am sure it is useful to some, but for me maybe sports scores and the weather.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #11

It was really interesting searching around throught the various tools in order to find the right websites for me. The RSS reader is a great tool, but for me, a person who does not do much "Surfing" I can do without it. The part where you can find local news by using your zip code was a fast way to be able to check news in many places without having to search for the actual newspaper site.

http://stephanieseducationaljourney.blogspot.com/2009/11/thing-11.html#comment-form

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #10

Well I guess I wasn't as interested in the reader as everybody else was. I do not do much internet surfing unless I am studying. I have Yahoo as my homepage and pretty much get my news, sports , and weather from there. I guess if I was a person who did alot of surfing that this would be a much easier way to keep all of the surfing to a minimum and be able to go to one or two pages.


http://billiealbert.blogspot.com/2009/10/thing-10.html?showComment=1259080441901_AIe9_BF5fh8A1ielT8sdEs-5YYzpa7O8__4IEY0FwndKwMiKxz3jLzDhJasymmmyz9111UGg_Ojw5R91M1oNE_hCY3_pw_GNQp2idXQpsPDzlxEVFZC-yv0AxUURfuWt56ACYV8VLeigVaZGYx3HTAl15zYpuai3LA8Uc0XcdSOOdYBwLX_RweigvrAhYqeaVBBN6FcksvYk-wJR8GrXTO_WHXqQ7WoyEA#c597563318392688358

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #9

I went to sillywebcam.com and was playing around with the different generators, I think the one I like the most was the fire generator. With this generator everytime you moved it was if you had flames coming out of your skin, but the one I decided upon using was the Andy Warhol inspired one. I visited many sites but some of them would not save the images. The sillywebcam.com would not let me save the image either so I decided to use my printscreen function which worked. I think that this would be an interesting site to have students get onto and take a picture of themselves to put on a bulletin board.


http://cfdenton.blogspot.com/2009/11/there-is-endless-amount-of-image.html?showComment=1259080255913_AIe9_BFpPw84qvhFfh5D6-LKk4gbw9g7oW4Qhy-TR1TuF0xox3rE07GLrPEMnOkG_aqEX6-H1MVaqKXUJwt0OHiG-fGLA48Osw563OIw3GivFDBiUVXcpCJlJjc2Mn0zlKzZ2sK4ImZhi_4vhwCRPMW3j_7OI7kVJf-aRX4Giw7HL0m3RUb1lJ5P-Do-wFXeCZEXujXXF_9AH7fhwI9Eg1yof88JL6Ki6eJMwp1wwKpBFnZEPBcqz_U#c8482887663359208723

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #8

Places Visited

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

I have been a user of flickr for quite a while and did not know anything of the Mashups. I thought it would be interesting to put all of the places I have ever been to on a map to see what areas I have spent the most time in. I think this would be an interesting tool to have students make a map of how many different states or countries that they have visited. As a class we could have a discussion on how people and thier living conditions differ from other states or countries. As we are not the only country in the world students should understand that the education they recieve is not something to take for granted.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #7

I have a Flickr account already but I have in the past logged on to look at some of the wonderful pictures that people post on there. I had the opportunity to go to London around Christmas 2007 with Austin Peay State University, and I was able to stay in London for 2 weeks. I have seen many pictures of London, but London to me looks better gloomy than it does sunny. I loved this picture because it represents something that was really awesome to me, the Millenium Wheel and the sky was so very dark and dreary. I think that Flickr is a wonderful site for amateur photographers to post their pictures for others to critique. Navigating through Flickr is so very easy, you type in some key words of what type of pictures you want and you get page after page of pictures to view. You need to be very broad in your search though, too many words will yield very few pictures.

1. Rachel Morris 23 Things http://rachelmorris-apsuthing2.blogspot.com/2009/09/flickr-thing-7.html?showComment=1254168789752#c7234521690290082234

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #6

So I checked out a few of the sites that were on the Education 2.0 awards list, and there was one there that I use all the time at work. Pandora is such a great site because I can put in the type of music I want to play and the site will play any music or bands that might have the same style of music. When I have my own classroom I can see how this might be of help to students, I had a teacher in High School who used to play symphony music during days we would have a test or a study day, and it would help with concentration.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #5

As I watched the video for School 2.0 I realized that the future of teaching is not like that of the past, standing in front of a blackboard citing dates and events. The students of today are so much more technology inclined than we were in the 80's and 90's. They have Ipods, Computers, internet, Youtube, online blogs, and video games you can play online and talk to a play other people around the world. I had a cassette player, books, magazines, and the video games I had was one dimensional, and only could have 2 players. Along with all that technology comes the difficulty in learning to use it. As a future educator and a life long learner, I have to not only be able to use this technology but also explain to my students how to use it for educational purposes. I think School 2.0 will help us break the teaching mold and show us new and more interesting ways of educating students. The future of schools is one that is going to need a lot more money to keep up with the demands of trying to keep our country online with other countries in education. I certainly hope that there is a way that money will be allocated for this endeavour.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #4

Being that this is only my Fourth blog I have not spent very much time in the Blogosphere. After reading a few of the required blogs, I understand why it would be proper to leave some sort of comment on what you read. The reasons for doing this might be if you agree or disagree with what you read, or you might want to add some missing information for the blogs writer. You might possibly be commenting on another comment to the blog, or just giving the writer a thumbs up or down. I don't think that a writer needs to be controversial just to have people read their blogs, I think there is enough controversy in the world already. I know my blogs are not award winning, exiting, or intellectual, but I think that by learning and spreading that information through blogs, many people might find information that they were not aware of.

1. Dorris Educates America http://dorriseducates.blogspot.com/2009/09/thing-3-classroom-blogging.html?showComment=1252616822798#c1207677651350896719

Nickersons Thoughts Thing #3

I think that a Blog could be a very useful tool in the classroom, using History as an example, after the teacher is finished with a specific chapter or lesson, the students could then Blog about what they think was the catalyst of a specific moment in history, or about possibly how the student might have retained all the information for the test, so other students might try their technique. This blog might help students that are too afraid or embarrased to approach the teacher if they are having problems in the classroom, get help from friends. I think that as a teacher if you were lucky enough to have a room full of computers you could have students at the beginning of class Blog about the question of the day, and save paper, plus the teacher would be able to give credit for completion of the blogs.

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #2

I am not sure why I named my Blog what I did, I was thinking about "Deep thoughts" but that would be a ripoff so I just decided on what I did. I think the avatar that I created is kinda like me, he just is there with his jeans and shirt on. Creating the blog was a lot more entertaining than watching the PowerPoint slide that we had to watch in order to blog about Thing #1. I have heard so much about people blogging and I have never really Blogged before, unless you count updating my status on Facebook, which is kind of a short blog. I think it is very interesting and I plan on getting on here and hunting and pecking around to see what different ways I can tweak my blog and it's settings. As for creating the Avatar and posting it, that is a different story altogether. Once I entered the Doppleme site, I started to make my avatar, and after the first screen it asked me to sign in, which I did. When I went back to making my avatar, it would not let me sign in, because I had not copied down the generic password that it gives out, instead of just asking me to make a password. Once I figured that out and got the generic password I signed into to website again then promptly changed my password to my generic password. Making the avatar was not hard, but did require a lot of saving. Once I finished making the avatar I tried to post it to my blog unsuccessfully, I then decided to go back to the D2L page to get the directions from the source. I finally have my little creation gazing at me from my blog page now, and all is right in the world.


1. Jen's 23 Things http://jhardy23things.blogspot.com/2009/09/thing-3.html?showComment=1254167528636#c2722001463570196

Nickerson's Thoughts Thing #1

So here I am trying to come up with something intellectual and introspective about lifelong learning. I feel that I am a lifelong learner as I am always trying to learn about how to use new technology. Other times whenever there is something around my house that needs to be fixed I will research that specific problem on the Internet to find the best solution to repair the problem. I am always interested about finding out how things work, if it is something simple, I will have no problem disassembling it, other times if it is complicated such as a computer, I would just rather look at a diagram of how it works. I am currently trying to teach myself how to play guitar although as much as I want to be I am not musically inclined. I think for the most part I will always be curious about what makes things tick.